I've never found a reproduction that looks really the same including the stuff we had custom made to match our living room after the previous owner let a section get damp and rot. There is something about the feel of period woodwork that the modern machinery just doesn't match right
Painting skirting boards
- Thread starter DannyW
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I've never found a reproduction that looks really the same including the stuff we had custom made to match our living room after the previous owner let a section get damp and rot. There is something about the feel of period woodwork that the modern machinery just doesn't match right
Ours were all period, I ripped them all off and got a joiner mate to profile them up and make me a load of new ones. Its expensive but you will, as pointed out be there for weeks stripping them (unless you can get them off and dipped). Its soul destroying work to do them by hand.
yea i did the wooden bit that gets walked on for a patio door...
It only had 5 different colours and probably about 10 coats but took me ages to get the paint off with that acid stuff and a scraper!
I can only imagine how tedious it must be to do any skirting boards by hand
It's a question of fine timber and craftsmanship that is so rare these days.
They're started to build shoddier and shoddier builds until we get to now when no craftsmanship goes into anything and nothing is built to last.
Not to mention a lot of fine timber is endangered now and either incredibly pricey or impossible to get hold of except for grey markets.
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Tend to agree but also I think the majority don't want to pay for good quality workmanship and materials, maybe they don't care, maybe they just can't afford it.
I don't agree with that, I keep asking but where is this golden age of construction? where everything is built to high standards with good quality materials.
All our timber has to be FSC certified including formwork and hoardings, again no one is prepared to pay for sustainably sourced hardwoods.
I think the general attitude of consumers nowadays is quantity not quality. People were able to pay for quality once upon a time, why not nowadays?
Theres a drop in quality, I'll hit major construction eras for bulk housing.
Georgian stuff, built very well, good sized rooms, hardwoods, some plasterwork and carved detail more often than not, lovely stuff. I'm not talking mansions I'm talking terraced houses.
Victorian, ok, a bit smaller, a bit more industrialised but often some nice ironwork and woodwork in there, it was built from brick.
1930's housing, ok, we're even smaller now, maybe skirting and architrave isn't so fancy and knocked out cheaply, but at least a carpenter has fitted it, and the front doors are often lovely bits of work, stained glass isn't uncommon to see. Some slap on fronting going on.
1950's post war now, starting to see a major dip in quality, but it's built sturdy, the walls are solid and plastered quite well, and it's affordable.
1970's **** me we've taken a turn, houses slung up, cheap vinyl doors, ****** plastering, the floors are the worst kind of squeaky chipboard.
Late 80's/ early 90's god awful, much more of the 70's and they're all pretty much much of the same, seems to be decreasing in quality and size and the amount on a piece of land increasing.
Nowadays, houses slung up as quickly as possible in as close a proximity as possible with cheap materials, thermalite block, bare minimum of everything to meet building regs. Almost everything done by polish immigrants using bodge systems "yeah, stick up the metal runners, some plasterboard and a bit of magnolia, lets finish it quick and sell it for as much of a ripoff as we can, governments helping us after all". All cheap softwood/ formed/ mdf fittings and fixtures, everything overlooked, tiny, tiny gardens. No craftsmanship or quality.
FSC certified is only available if the timber is FSC certifiable, I remember writing a paper on illegal deforestation in madagascar and how Gibson got tied up in it. Certain woods are so horrendously endangered you can't get them without going for the extralegal option.
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I do think people have this rose tinted view on housing, most of the crap housing from all of those eras have been pulled down or got blown to piece in the 40s, what's left is the better quality people want to keep yet refer to these as sample panel of the age. Think of victorian back to back housing, the pre cast concrete houses that mortgage companies won't touch and I'm not going to start on the flats.
All without some severe retrofitting are uneconomical and inefficient, most have had to have some sort of retro damp proofing.
Plot sizes are smaller because, well, we are running out of room and also gardens are not high on peoples priority list anymore.
And the craftmanship is indicative of modern throw away society not just housing.
All without some severe retrofitting are uneconomical and inefficient, most have had to have some sort of retro damp proofing.
Plot sizes are smaller because, well, we are running out of room and also gardens are not high on peoples priority list anymore.
And the craftmanship is indicative of modern throw away society not just housing.
The only reason they have had to have retrofitted damp proofing is because people don't understand the building techniques of the era, they slap double glazing in and gypsum plaster a house which was designed to breath and wonder what the hell happened with the damp.
Often the houses pulled down were replaced with poorer quality one fueled by a government scheme to boost the economy with some backwards broken window view on development.
If people don't want gardens why aren't we just building flats?
It should be illegal to throw up houses worse in quality than the wartime prefabs we were meant to bin decades ago.
yikes that must have been expensive I think we had three meters made up and that was enough to make me wince!
I'm not sure why people think that hot air gunning is such hard work or takes so long I stripped the entire bay window on our house to the bare wood work and the total time taken can't have been more than a couple of days, can't be more accurate as I was striiping a section and then prepping and priming it before moving on to break up the job. I've also stripped all our sash windows back to the bare wood work and the prep and painting afterwards takes far longer than the stripping.
Anything gloss based which is what the majority of word work is painted with, if it is old wood even if it has an emulsion finish chances are there are 50 layers of lead based gloss underneath that will buble off the topcoats after a bit of hot air is applied!
Gloss based?
You mean oil based.
And generally oil or shellac based, and anything vinyl will come off with heat.
Hell, I remember burning emulsion off pipes with blowtorch once upon a time to clean it prior to soldering a T in.
I just remember trying a heat gun on a stair railing years ago and getting nowhere it bubbled a bit but wouldn't scrap off very well
I think the heat gun I had went up to around 800c but this would have been about 6 or so years ago maybe heat guns have improved a lot since then
I think the heat gun I had went up to around 800c but this would have been about 6 or so years ago maybe heat guns have improved a lot since then